6 ms·

Whether proponents of government directed Science, agree or disagree, your comment presents a well reasoned argument. At the moment it is the most substantive c

Whether proponents of government directed Science, agree or disagree, your comment presents a well reasoned argument. At the moment it is the most substantive comment on the page. Moreover, it is a direct, good faith response to the parent commenter's question. Yet for all of this, I see that the comment has been downvoted into grey. At the time of posting, no substantive rebuttals have been offered. This typifies the quality of discourse around defunding of "The Science" at HN.

exe34 1y ago
it's a shit argument. Fundamental research funded by the government led to the Googles and OpenAIs of today. If industry funds research, the profits stay in the hands of the same people. When government funds research, new billionaires are minted down the line. if you like billionaires (I don't), you'd fund government research, not hope that the existing billionaires think it's in their interest. We wouldn't know about CFCs and the ozone if CFCs companies funded the research - we'd be burned to a crisp.
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  You have a lack of imagination. The research lead to Google and OpenAI, but you can’t imagine such research could have happened without taxpayer funding. Furthermore there is no return to the taxpayer for the funding, other than esoteric “America benefits when the research happens in America”
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > you can’t imagine such research could have happened without taxpayer funding In a vacuum, maybe. But if China is subsidising basic research, it doesn’t make sense for private enterprise to do it here. That technology base shifts to where its cost of capital is lowest. This is practically how America ascended—putting massive public resources behind emerging science and technology before the fractured powers of Europe gathered the conviction to. It doesn’t even take imagination to see the fruits of this philosophy. There are countries whose governments don’t spend on R&D. Their citizens are poor and unfree, their governments less than sovereign on the international stage. > there is no return to the taxpayer for the funding The return comes from taxing the growth the R&D enables. Silicon Valley has more than returned the military funding that kickstarted it.
    - palmfacehn 1y ago
      Equating central planning with liberty feels like a reach. Can you think of any examples where central planning resulted in misallocated resources? If so, why is state directed research a special case? If the state has cancelled research for 'impure' political motives, how would we know that it hasn't directed state research (and outcomes) for similarly impure political reasons? There's an interesting contradiction in the popular discourse here at HN. The government is simultaneously characterized as unable to make the correct decisions and at the same time, characterized as the only viable mechanism to conduct scientific research. These two themes seem contradictory. If they cannot make the "right" decisions or lack competence in leadership, it wouldn't be unreasonable to doubt the efficacy of their research leadership. How could they possibly identify the problems which are worthy of solving under these conditions? If their leadership is competent, if they are correctly identifying the necessary research projects, then why do proponents of government directed "science" have so many gripes in regards to the direction which government science is directed? Appeals to the status quo of state funded research as the only or best way to achieve outcomes requires a better argument. At best, I think you might offer arguments via pragmatism. It would be reasonable to expect that purely voluntarily funded research would produce different outcomes. As these pursuits would generally be directed towards creating positive economic outcomes, rather than political or ideological ones, we might also expect that these outcomes would be better along the metric of economic value. Politically funded research could reasonably be expected to better at achieving political or ideological outcomes. However, these are arguments from principle. We would need to test it empirically for those caught in the Scientismic paradigm to accept the results. Under this model of argument, the existence of state funded research tampers with the results. We wouldn't know how a voluntarily funded research regime would function when competing state funds are polluting the pool. Researchers may find it easier to pursue state backed projects than pursue projects which would appeal to the value creation process. This is just one of the flaws in the argumentum ad antiquitatem approach.
      - jltsiren 1y ago
        People who support public funding for research are usually strongly opposed to central planning in the allocation of the funds. They don't want to have uninformed politicians, administrators, and citizens deciding what research is worth funding. They want to have the decisions done in the field, by people who understand the topic. Public funding does not require centralization. While the American style of governance is top-heavy, the EU is less centralized, with most resources at the state level. Each state has its own agencies for funding research, and together they distribute much more funding than EU-level agencies. There are also plenty of private organizations funding basic research. European elites have traditionally found it prestigious to support arts and sciences, and hence there are many private foundations funding research. While some elements of that culture made it to the US, it's not as strong there as it is in Europe. Instead, rich Americans prefer direct donations to universities, which often use the money for buildings and student amenities. In other words, American universities rely more on central sources of research funding, as the states are less capable and private entities less interested than in Europe.
  - exe34 1y ago
    > You have a lack of imagination. Maybe I should move to lalaland too. It sounds nice there. Back in reality, American economic and military supremacy was founded on Government funding fundamental research and industry using it to create unprecedented growth in wealth and quality of life for mot people in the form of jobs. China has figured it out, and they are forging ahead. America is heading back to the middle ages.
intermerda 1y ago
You're clearly not familiar with Brandolini's law.

exe34 1y ago

it's a shit argument. Fundamental research funded by the government led to the Googles and OpenAIs of today. If industry funds research, the profits stay in the hands of the same people. When government funds research, new billionaires are minted down the line. if you like billionaires (I don't), you'd fund government research, not hope that the existing billionaires think it's in their interest. We wouldn't know about CFCs and the ozone if CFCs companies funded the research - we'd be burned to a crisp.

monero-xmr 1y ago
You have a lack of imagination. The research lead to Google and OpenAI, but you can’t imagine such research could have happened without taxpayer funding. Furthermore there is no return to the taxpayer for the funding, other than esoteric “America benefits when the research happens in America”
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > you can’t imagine such research could have happened without taxpayer funding In a vacuum, maybe. But if China is subsidising basic research, it doesn’t make sense for private enterprise to do it here. That technology base shifts to where its cost of capital is lowest. This is practically how America ascended—putting massive public resources behind emerging science and technology before the fractured powers of Europe gathered the conviction to. It doesn’t even take imagination to see the fruits of this philosophy. There are countries whose governments don’t spend on R&D. Their citizens are poor and unfree, their governments less than sovereign on the international stage. > there is no return to the taxpayer for the funding The return comes from taxing the growth the R&D enables. Silicon Valley has more than returned the military funding that kickstarted it.
  - palmfacehn 1y ago
    Equating central planning with liberty feels like a reach. Can you think of any examples where central planning resulted in misallocated resources? If so, why is state directed research a special case? If the state has cancelled research for 'impure' political motives, how would we know that it hasn't directed state research (and outcomes) for similarly impure political reasons? There's an interesting contradiction in the popular discourse here at HN. The government is simultaneously characterized as unable to make the correct decisions and at the same time, characterized as the only viable mechanism to conduct scientific research. These two themes seem contradictory. If they cannot make the "right" decisions or lack competence in leadership, it wouldn't be unreasonable to doubt the efficacy of their research leadership. How could they possibly identify the problems which are worthy of solving under these conditions? If their leadership is competent, if they are correctly identifying the necessary research projects, then why do proponents of government directed "science" have so many gripes in regards to the direction which government science is directed? Appeals to the status quo of state funded research as the only or best way to achieve outcomes requires a better argument. At best, I think you might offer arguments via pragmatism. It would be reasonable to expect that purely voluntarily funded research would produce different outcomes. As these pursuits would generally be directed towards creating positive economic outcomes, rather than political or ideological ones, we might also expect that these outcomes would be better along the metric of economic value. Politically funded research could reasonably be expected to better at achieving political or ideological outcomes. However, these are arguments from principle. We would need to test it empirically for those caught in the Scientismic paradigm to accept the results. Under this model of argument, the existence of state funded research tampers with the results. We wouldn't know how a voluntarily funded research regime would function when competing state funds are polluting the pool. Researchers may find it easier to pursue state backed projects than pursue projects which would appeal to the value creation process. This is just one of the flaws in the argumentum ad antiquitatem approach.
    - jltsiren 1y ago
      People who support public funding for research are usually strongly opposed to central planning in the allocation of the funds. They don't want to have uninformed politicians, administrators, and citizens deciding what research is worth funding. They want to have the decisions done in the field, by people who understand the topic. Public funding does not require centralization. While the American style of governance is top-heavy, the EU is less centralized, with most resources at the state level. Each state has its own agencies for funding research, and together they distribute much more funding than EU-level agencies. There are also plenty of private organizations funding basic research. European elites have traditionally found it prestigious to support arts and sciences, and hence there are many private foundations funding research. While some elements of that culture made it to the US, it's not as strong there as it is in Europe. Instead, rich Americans prefer direct donations to universities, which often use the money for buildings and student amenities. In other words, American universities rely more on central sources of research funding, as the states are less capable and private entities less interested than in Europe.
- exe34 1y ago
  > You have a lack of imagination. Maybe I should move to lalaland too. It sounds nice there. Back in reality, American economic and military supremacy was founded on Government funding fundamental research and industry using it to create unprecedented growth in wealth and quality of life for mot people in the form of jobs. China has figured it out, and they are forging ahead. America is heading back to the middle ages.

intermerda 1y ago

You're clearly not familiar with Brandolini's law.